TY - JOUR

T1 - Tungsten Nanoparticles Accelerate Polysulfides Conversion

T2 - A Viable Route toward Stable Room-Temperature Sodium–Sulfur Batteries

AU - Liu, Yuping

AU - Ma, Shuangying

AU - Rosebrock, Marina

AU - Rusch, Pascal

AU - Barnscheidt, Yvo

AU - Wu, Chuanqiang

AU - Nan, Pengfei

AU - Bettels, Frederik

AU - Lin, Zhihua

AU - Li, Taoran

AU - Ge, Binghui

AU - Bigall, Nadja C.

AU - Pfnür, Herbert

AU - Ding, Fei

AU - Zhang, Chaofeng

AU - Zhang, Lin

N1 - Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the support from Laboratory of Nano and Quantum Engineering (LNQE) in Leibniz University Hannover. L.Z. acknowledges the funding supports from “CircularLIB” from Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK) and from Hannover School for Nanotechnology (hsn‐digital). M.R., P.R., and N.C.B. would like to acknowledge the financial support of the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement 714429). N.C.B. would like to additionally thank the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) for funding under Germany's excellence strategy within the cluster of excellence PhoenixD (EXC 2122, project ID 390833453) and the grant BI 1708/4‐1.

PY - 2022/4/14

Y1 - 2022/4/14

N2 - Room-temperature sodium–sulfur (RT Na–S) batteries are arousing great interest in recent years. Their practical applications, however, are hindered by several intrinsic problems, such as the sluggish kinetic, shuttle effect, and the incomplete conversion of sodium polysulfides (NaPSs). Here a sulfur host material that is based on tungsten nanoparticles embedded in nitrogen-doped graphene is reported. The incorporation of tungsten nanoparticles significantly accelerates the polysulfides conversion (especially the reduction of Na2S4 to Na2S, which contributes to 75% of the full capacity) and completely suppresses the shuttle effect, en route to a fully reversible reaction of NaPSs. With a host weight ratio of only 9.1% (about 3–6 times lower than that in recent reports), the cathode shows unprecedented electrochemical performances even at high sulfur mass loadings. The experimental findings, which are corroborated by the first-principles calculations, highlight the so far unexplored role of tungsten nanoparticles in sulfur hosts, thus pointing to a viable route toward stable Na–S batteries at room temperatures.

AB - Room-temperature sodium–sulfur (RT Na–S) batteries are arousing great interest in recent years. Their practical applications, however, are hindered by several intrinsic problems, such as the sluggish kinetic, shuttle effect, and the incomplete conversion of sodium polysulfides (NaPSs). Here a sulfur host material that is based on tungsten nanoparticles embedded in nitrogen-doped graphene is reported. The incorporation of tungsten nanoparticles significantly accelerates the polysulfides conversion (especially the reduction of Na2S4 to Na2S, which contributes to 75% of the full capacity) and completely suppresses the shuttle effect, en route to a fully reversible reaction of NaPSs. With a host weight ratio of only 9.1% (about 3–6 times lower than that in recent reports), the cathode shows unprecedented electrochemical performances even at high sulfur mass loadings. The experimental findings, which are corroborated by the first-principles calculations, highlight the so far unexplored role of tungsten nanoparticles in sulfur hosts, thus pointing to a viable route toward stable Na–S batteries at room temperatures.

KW - electrocatalyst

KW - kinetics

KW - large-scale energy storage

KW - room-temperature sodium-sulfur batteries

KW - tungsten nanoparticles

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85124508136&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1002/advs.202105544

DO - 10.1002/advs.202105544

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85124508136

VL - 9

JO - Advanced science

JF - Advanced science

SN - 2198-3844

IS - 11

M1 - 2105544

ER -